Plastic straws are the new cigarettes — except there's no area outside buildings where people sip from cups with plastic tubes, looking indifferent to your disapproval.
Straws probably will be banned before they're relegated to Designated Sipping Areas. And then what? How will you get fluids from cup to maw?
Don't worry. Canny entrepreneurs are already selling permanent straws. The top-quality ones are segmented, jointed metal tubes that fold up for storage and presumably have to be hand-washed with spring water, their hinges oiled with bee sweat or something equally artisanal. All they need now is a fancy name — let's say Personal Liquid Elevation Devices, or PLEDs.
PLEDs sell for the same price as 2,000 disposable straws at Target. As soon as they went on sale, scammers started selling cheap knockoffs on Amazon.
This is not surprising. A while ago I was shopping for electric razors, because there are mornings when I have no interest in seeing my face in the mirror. I bought a razor that was highly rated and reasonably priced.
When the device arrived, it was identical to a name-brand item, except for the name and the brand.
The box said something like: "For the Best Sweet, the Shaver to a Face of Life!" I went back to look at the web page where I had found it, and the reviews were all gushing:
"This is the best razor of the whisker time."